Murder in the Cathedral, by Kerry Greenwood

Phryne Fisher and her loyal companion, Dot, travel to Bendigo for the inauguration of her friend Lionel as Bishop. Unfortunately the grand occasion is marred by the untimely death of an unpopular deacon. Using planes and trains more than automobiles, Miss Fisher helps the police to solve the murder, also putting paid to a gold mining scam along the way. This tale benefits from a reduction in the roles of Phryne’s staff, henchmen and adopted children, who all play very minor parts in the action. The focus on fashion and food is always enjoyable, but several (largely unnecessary) coincidences and tangents divert from the story rather than add to it, particularly the array of people that turn up in Bendigo. The Chinese lesbian love subplot resolves a storyline from an earlier book that many readers would neither remember nor care about. But the Morris dancing is fun and this is a welcome return to form after a few duds and a great way to end the Phryne Fisher saga, as there will be no more with the untimely death of Kerry Greenwood.

The Eights, by Joanna Miller

In 1920 women are officially admitted to degree courses at Oxford for the first time, but with restrictions on their dress, behaviour and social lives that do not apply to male students. Four young women - Beatrice, Dora, Otto and Marianne - live in corridor eight of St Hugh’s College. They have little in common, apart from the post-war trauma that affects so many of their peers, but become firm friends and allies. The story of their first year at University, with all its trials, tribulations and triumphs, unfolds as they face discrimination, abuse and misogyny from many quarters. Miller clearly did a lot of research and many of the finer details the reader doesn’t need to know; the tactic of putting them in the mouth of geeky Beatrice doesn’t make it any less didactic. It’s a really interesting setting and the examination of difficult mother-daughter relationships adds depth, but some story elements are hard to swallow.

When You Burn Me, by Lorelei Johnson

Sienna is a light witch, raised by her aunt in a progressive coven after the death of her parents when she was a child. They were guardians of the light, brutally murdered by a vicious dark coven, the Order of Erris, seeking what they were guarding. So there is consternation in her coven when Sienna finds herself both under threat from the Order and entangled with a dark warlock. Can she trust him when he says he wants to help her against the Order, or does Damon have his own agenda? This independently published dark fantasy novel has a high quality look and feel. Unfortunately the contents don’t quite live up to it. While the characters are well drawn, the plot is unconvincing and the text is riddled with typos. It’s a pity more wasn’t spent on the editing and proofreading, rather than the paper quality and cover art. With the best will in the world to support independent local authors, the meh storyline does not inspire the impetus to read the further two books in the Enchanted Hearts series.

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach

After many failed rounds of IVF, a failed marriage and a dead cat, academic Phoebe has had enough of life and travels to a luxury hotel in Newport to end it on a high note. But Lila has booked out the entire hotel, apart from Phoebe’s room, for her six-day wedding extravaganza and she is not having a suicide wreck her big event. Against all odds the two women become friends, or at least trusted collaborators, both finding a new path that offers a hopeful future. Phoebe and Lila both take a similar journey of self-discovery, although with quite different outcomes. They get to know themselves and what they really want and how to go about getting it. It’s an interesting and often amusing examination of familial and friend relationships with a satisfying conclusion.

Murder on North Terrace, by Lainie Anderson

It is September 1917 and a member of the Board of Governors has been found murdered in the art gallery on Adelaide’s North Terrace. This sequel to The Death of Dora Black sees Woman Police Constable Kate Cocks’s offsider Ethel Bromley seconded to use her society contacts to help investigate the murder. Left overstretched and under resourced, Miss Cox struggles to keep the women and children of Adelaide safe, with the added worry of a rapist leaving a young girl for dead in the parklands. In the wearying fourth year of the war there are both demobbed and newly recruited soldiers to deal with as well. Lainie Anderson’s chops as an historian provides a fascinating window into Adelaide in the 1910s alongside a cracking mystery with engaging, if flawed, heroines.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026), directed by David Frankel

At the top of her game in journalism, Andy Sachs nevertheless finds herself in need of a job and back at Runway Magazine to rescue its reputation after a fast fashion scandal. Twenty years after the original, all the major players have reunited for this sharply funny sequel that softens the focus on fashion to depict the dire state of publishing. It also makes some digs at tech bros and media magnates along the way. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci clearly have fun with it, with Streep and Tucci looking not a day older than in the first outing while Hathaway and Blunt certainly don’t show two decades – that’s Hollywood. The star-studded cast includes innumerable celebrity cameos, including speaking roles for Donatella Versace and Lady Gaga. There is some interesting casting in smaller roles, including Lucy Liu as a white knight, Kenneth Branagh as Mr Miranda, Justin Theroux as a tech bro and Patrick Brammall, allowed to be Australian without explanation, as a love interest. The film attempts to show that no-one is a total villain or hero, as every human is flawed, but it is difficult to accept the blind loyalty commanded by Miranda Priestly when she is so awful most of the time. Her softer side doesn’t quite ring true, making her looking like a better option only because the alternative monsters are even worse. A case of better the devil you know?

Powerless, by Lauren Roberts

Paedyn Gray is a homeless orphan, surviving the slums of Ilya by thieving and hiding her great secret – a lack of an elite ability that is essential to be allowed to live in this country. Ordinaries have been declared diseased and are banished or killed, so Paedyn’s late father trained her powers of observation to pose as a psychic. When she saves the life of the King’s enforcer, Prince Kai, Paedyn is forced to compete in the five-yearly Elite trials, pitting her ‘psychic’ skills against those with super strength, super speed, and powers of illusion, kinesis and transformation. The secret sauce to great SF and fantasy is building a believable world, which then allows the reader to suspend disbelief about events that happen within it. The low quality ketchup underlying Powerless, combined with pedestrian writing, makes this poor man’s Hunger Games an increasingly tedious read. It’s full of explicit and gratuitous violence, with a ludicrously chaste love triangle. Powerless indeed.